Guru Down! (i.e. Week 3 of FF Analyst Analysis)

Sorry for the lateness of this post, but well, a) I’ve been busy and b) no one actually reads this blog.

Anyways, something big actually happened last week. We lost a guru. David Sabino’s “sit ’em, start ’em” column at SI.com was no where to be found, and the only Sports Illustrated column bearing a “sit ’em, start ’em” format was written by a different writer, Eric Mack. I wish I could just have Mr. Mack replace Mr. Sabino, but I can’t. Because Mr. Mack’s column is completely pointless for fantasy purposes. He goes through every NFL game of the week and recommends several players from each team for fantasy purposes. I stopped counting at 50 players mentioned in his week 3 column, and I was only half-way through reading it. That’s just too many players. How are you going to choose between Players A, B, and C if all three players wind up being recommended in the same column? More info isn’t always helpful when it comes to fantasy sports.

What’s weird is that my biggest complaint about Sabino is that he recommended too few players. He only covered seven players each in weeks one and two. Fantasy advice is useless if no one on your roster (or no one you could pick up) is even mentioned, and the same is true for the opposite — if everyone on your roster is mentioned.

Total # of recs: 29 (he originally posted 31 when his column went up on Thursday, but two of his recommendations were mooted by the injury report on Friday, and Berry had the due diligence to update things)

Good calls: 18

Bad calls: 11

Best call: Loving Dustin Keller. He had a monster game for the Jets last week, topping not just all TEs, but most of the top WRs, too.

Worst call: Loving Josh Freeman. I know JF was putting up good numbers during weeks 1 and 2, but what in the world made Berry pick a young QB facing the Pitt defense? With the match-up in mind, Berry did rein in his expectations for Freeman quite a bit, but he didn’t rein them in enough.

Close call: Loving Jason Witten. He didn’t have an awful game, especially in PPR leagues, but he didn’t have the great game Berry said he would.

Close call: Start McNabb. It was a mediocre performance, but mediocre against the Rams is pathetic. Derek Anderson put up better numbers against them in week 1.

Percentage of advice that was actually good: 63%

So the winner this week is…

Dr. Juan, with Matthew Berry very close behind.

What I’ve learned so far: The ideal number of recs to make in a sit/start column is between 20 and 30. Any more than that and you start offering contradictory advice, any less than that you run the risk of offering nothing of use at all.

I’ve also learned this is a lot more time consuming than I thought it’d be.

I’m open to replacing Mr. Sabino with someone else. The only criteria is they must have a weekly sit/start column with an archive (so I can go back and see how they did in the first three weeks), and they need to hopefully recommend more players than Mr. Halpin (9) but less than Dr. Juan (30).